


3086 Formed

by Oh_Hey_Its



Series: 3086 [1]
Category: Tegan and Sara (Band)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/F, dystopian au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2018-11-13 02:05:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11174745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oh_Hey_Its/pseuds/Oh_Hey_Its
Summary: She disappears to the only place she feels she belongs. It is a home... her own; the first she’s ever had.-A prequel to my previous work 3086 Lost





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First chapter of that prequel to 3086 Lost that I posted about on Tumblr last week. Can't wait to meet Sara in the next chapter, I'll try to get that up soon. Hope that this lives up to you all's expectations and that you enjoy! And as always, comments are much appreciated and always responded to!

Tegan loves the woods, the trees tall pillars holding up a sky that is so blue and cloudless today that is seems endless and all encompassing. She likes to wonder about what is beyond all of that color, or what it’s like for all of those little specks of light shining when it grows dark and all of that color drains from the sky. It’s probably better than the life she lives now. Of course, that isn’t hard.

 

Tegan knows she should be grateful that the orphanage took her in after her parents disappeared, but it’s hard not to hold a grudge against all sides. They were young, or at least that’s what she’s told, and so inexperienced that they couldn’t really take care of her anyhow, especially since both were orphans themselves. Instead of asking for help or trying to learn, however, they’d simply up and left, leaving their newborn behind to die of starvation in their now abandoned house in their wake. 

 

She’d been found two days later, desperately sick, by a farmer looking for several cows who’d escaped from a nearby pasture, drawn to the shack she lay in by her weak and desperate cries. She’s been at the orphanage ever since, and although things could definitely be worse, they aren’t exactly great either. The home is overcrowded with other children, most of whose parents have been killed by Raiders during one of the many raids led against the community. They sleep on mattresses on the floor, and eat well only when the community has a surplus of crops to satisfy every hungry mouth. It’s not a happy existence, but it is an existence. It is why she loves the openness and quiet woods so dearly.

 

Sometimes she ventures further than she normally would between the trees. She’s not supposed to, the elders that run the orphanage tell them stories of little children straying too far and being kidnapped by the Supreme Government. But it is only deep in the woods that the remnants of the old machines from before the world was destroyed can be found. She loves to study their rusting parts, to strip their engines to find what makes them tick. The rusty metal calls to her, almost like it speaks of its past as she takes it apart, collecting its pieces and putting them back together only to take them apart once more. It soothes her, making the squalor she lives in easier to manage through the machineries order. 

 

It is to one of the old machines that she is returning to today, found last week in another one of her rambles; the shell of a giant armored vehicle, the ugly barrel of a gun sticking out of a turret on the top. She has plans for this old hulking beast, resting eternally along the tree line of an abandoned farmer’s field. She is going to remove what she cannot salvage of the inside and turn it into a home. Anything is better than the orphanage with its reminders of the parents she never had.

 

-

 

When she reaches the spot she quickly pulls herself up and slides down inside via the turret, inspecting the insides more closely than she had upon first discovering it. It’s mostly intact, with a few gauges hanging loosely from their sockets and several spots of fabric rotted away from the seats being the worst of the damage. This she can work with.

 

First, she turns the seats so they face behind their initial positioning and towards the center, more open area of the vehicle. She pulls the most damaged one out entirely and strips it of its cushioning, pulling a tattered sheet she’d stolen from one of the orphanage’s mattresses that morning and stuffing the foam like material inside before sewing closed. It’s not a perfect bed, but she’d much rather sleep on it than on a mattress with four other teenagers. She sticks it in the back, replacing the chair that she’d removed. It’s comfortable enough, cozy even.

 

Next she finishes the removal of the broken gauges, inspecting their wiring carefully. It takes a couple days of trial and error, as well as the testing of many of the spare parts she’d removed and found from other machines before she finally gets the wiring to conduct electricity from an old battery she’d found in a car, recharging it using a solar panel she built herself using scrap metal and other salvaged wiring. Now she has electricity to power several ancient and somewhat cracked but still usable light bulbs. The darkness is no longer the problem. The only thing she needs now in order to be self-sustained is a source of food. And even for this, she has a plan.

 

The following night, after everyone else's breathing had slowed down in sleep, Tegan sneaks out and onto a neighboring farm, picking several vegetables and climbing up an apple, orange, and peach tree to steal several fruits from each. In the morning she returns to her burgeoning home and picks through everything she’s stolen, removing the seeds and planting them in the old farmers field. Then, picking through her spare parts and scraps, she begins to attempt building a trap to capture the salmon that will soon be running up the stream, finishing it a week later and testing it to find several smaller fish successfully captured. The bigger prize will come in several weeks when the salmon began their journey up stream. She’ll be ready.

 

Finally, she’s reached a point where she can leave, escape from the reminders of her parent’s failure and to live her own life without the constant pity her presence arouses in the elders who watch over her and the other kids who don’t want to be friends with one who’d lost their family so dishonorably anyways.

 

She doesn’t have many belongings; a stuffed bear given to her by the farmer who’d found her, and a tattered picture of a man and a woman, about the same age as herself now… 17. Those were her parents, she is told. She hates them but she holds on to the picture anyway in the faint hope that someday they might return and take her with them to wherever they went. She doesn’t want to believe that they’re  either defected or dead. 

 

The only other thing she carries with her the night she leaves is a copy of an old book from before the world ended called  The Great Gatsby . She’s read it so many times that the cover is falling off and the binding cracks whenever she turns a page, but it’s the only book she owns and she can’t help but find the story fascinating. With her only possessions cradled in her arms she leaves the community and the orphanage and doesn’t look back. They don’t understand her need for organization and order and for her hands to always be busy with metal and red with rust. 

 

She disappears to the only place she feels she belongs. It is a home, her own, the first she’s ever had.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well...... I have returned. My hiatus was a long and necessary one, but I am thrilled to be writing again. These old fics deserve their due and I have had every intention of seeing them through. Please leave me your thoughts if you can, I'd love to know if you're even still interested in this. Thanks!

For as long as she can remember, it's always been just the two of them. Sara and her mom, her mom and Sara. Her father? Killed by Raiders in a foolhardy attempt to defect and join the Supreme Leader's twisted cult. They don't talk about him, they aren't supposed to miss him.

 

They live in the back of the hospital, a wall separating them from the sick and the injured convalescing in their cots. When she was a child, their groans and blood would scare her, but these days she is desensitized to the violence and human suffering she experiences every day. There is no schooling here, no formal education system. Such an assembly of so many of the defenseless, of the future of their resistance, would amount to a wholesale slaughter. Instead she is an apprentice, next in line to take her mother's position as the doctor and caregiver of this place. There isn't much they can do, but they do much more than they should be able to. Sara's mother saves far more lives than she helps ease away.

 

-

 

It is evening, the sun's last rays just barely peeking between the trees that surround their little makeshift hospital. Sara sits at the dinner table opposite her mother, pushing around her food with an old fork, it's tines bent.

 

"Sara eat your dinner don't play with it." Her mother scolds. Sara sighs and drops the utensil, the clattering sound it makes when it connects with the chipped porcelain plate jarring in the otherwise silent surroundings. 

 

"I need you to go out to the woods tomorrow and find some Goldenrod and Yarrow. Jason isn't doing well and I'm afraid infection is beginning to set in."

 

Sara nods her head and forces a forkful of mushy canned beets into her mouth. Any chance to get out of the clinic for the day she'll take gladly. It's not that she doesn't like it there, helping people is all she has ever known, but she loves the escape of the woods even more. 

 

-

 

She leaves early that following morning, kissing her mother on the cheek goodbye, grumbling as she is forced to endure the same talk she always gets when she leaves their small town; if you hear aircraft, hide. If you see someone, hide. If you come back tonight and there is nothing left, run as far as you can away from here and know that I love you.

 

She hates hearing that last part, the slightest thought of returning to find her mother dead or taken is violently jarring and immensely upsetting. There hasn't been a raid on their town in years, not since the resistance moved underground, but the scars of the raids have lingered regardless. There are too many graves on the outskirts where the fields begin to forget those haunting days.

 

Sara pulls her pack up higher on her back, boots finding their way between massive roots of the towering oaks above her as she follows the trail that leads out into the forest. Soon, the sounds of what civilization remains fades into the breeze amongst the leaves and the birds calling to one another in the trees. If she didn't have her mother to return too, she'd've long since disappeared here and left all of that pain and suffering behind. 

 

She stops and closes her eyes for a moment as she reaches a patch of sunlight peeking through the thick foliage, allowing the rays to warm her pale skin. She opens them, brief moment of pure calm dissipating as she sets to work searching for what her mother needs. It doesn't take her long to find some Yarrow growing under a bush, crouching down as she unshoulders her pack and digs through its contents to find her spade.

 

The handle is slightly splintered from use but still usable, and she immediately goes to work digging round the roots the plant so she can remove it as intact as possible.

 

"Achoo! A-choo!"

 

Sara freezes, blood turning icy in her veins. Nobody from town had left with her this morning… and she hadn't heard any shuttles nearby that could signal a Raider patrol or other presence from the Dwelling.

 

Sara shoves her pack under the bush beside the half exposed roots of the Yarrow as quietly as she can, several more loud sneezes following the first two as she does so. Adrenaline pumping, she creeps through the underbrush towards the noise, spade gripped tightly in her right hand. She has no chance if there's more than one, she muses, but if she can use the element of surprise she might be able to overpower a single attacker. A clearing comes into view ahead, and Sara reaches its edge before stopping, heart nearly beating out of her chest in anticipation of what she will find there.

 

It's… a girl? She's leaned over with her hands on her knees, breathing deeply as she sneezes again, wiping her nose with the back of her hand frustratedly. The fear that had been coursing through Sara's veins evaporates at the sight, no guns or Raider armor in sight. A large motorcycle sits behind her, it's guts stripped and spread about. This girl must be doing something with it, judging by the oily smears on her cheek from where she wiped her nose and where it darkens her forearms and tattered jeans and t-shirt. 

 

Sara's curiosity gets the better of her, lowering the spade into a less threatening position while still remaining somewhat tense, she stands. God, her mother would kill her if she knew what she was about to do.

 

"You okay there?" She calls. The girl nearly jumps out of her skin, falling backwards onto her ass in a plume of dust. She looks up and their eyes meet and suddenly the other girl is blushing the darkest red Sara's ever seen. She smirks a little at the reaction, taking a step forward. "I'm not here to hurt you or anything, but your sneezing wasn't exactly quiet and we aren't used to outsiders in these parts. Just wanted to make sure you weren't some Dwelling creep."

 

"Oh ah okay, yes, sure. I am not of the Dwelling don't worry about that." The other girl stutters, still staring up at the woman before her.

 

"My name's Sara." Sara says, finally close enough to offer the other girl a hand up. She accepts with the slightest of hesitations, taking a step back and fruitlessly wiping the dust off of her dirty jeans. "Tegan."

 

"Pleasure to meet you Tegan. Might I ask what you're doing out here all alone with that thing?" Sara asks, pointing to the motorcycle behind them. 

 

"I like to fix things." Tegan says guardedly. "I found it out here, forgotten since before the bombs I think. Dragged it over here the other day."

 

"Cool." Sara says with a shrug, reaching down to wipe her now greasy palm on her own pants.

 

"What about you?" 

 

"My mom is the town doctor about a mile away from here. One of the farmers there cut himself pretty badly and it's gotten infected. She needs some herbs to try and save his arm."

 

"Shit that sounds rough." Tegan says, hand rubbing nervously at the back of her neck.

 

"It's not pretty, but it could be far worse." Sara says. "You live around here?"

 

"Oh yeah, back through the wood aways." Tegan gestures behind them. 

 

Sara's brow wrinkles slightly as the sound of a shuttle echoes through the valley from afar, noticing Tegan's wide eyes also find the sky; a reminder of the world still turning despite their awkward conversation. 

 

"Shit I should get back." Sara mutters, turning and jogging to where she hid her pack.

 

"Wait!" Tegan replies, covering her bike and it's various rusted parts with a tan colored tarp that blends with the dust beneath it. "Let me walk you back. Who knows what that shuttle dropped around here."

 

"That's nice and all, but I don't need your protection." Sara says, swinging her pack over her shoulders, spade still in hand. 

 

Tegan laughs. "Fair enough. I'd like to know where your town is though. I've lived nearby for years and never knew it existed."

 

Sara sighs for a moment, contemplating, before nodding. "Alright… you seem harmless enough." She smirks. "Just… try and rein those sneezes in would ya? I'd hate to get shot because you snorted too much pollen."

 

Tegan throws her head back and guffaws. "I like you! You don't hold back."

 

"C'mon then." Sara says over her shoulder with a grin. 

 

And then she's back on the trail, retracing her steps, this time with another in tow. They bicker amicably, teasing and prodding the other as they walk, a strange, but not unwelcome feeling growing between them. 

  
  



End file.
